Distinguished climate change specialist to talk about methane.

Myles Allen, Professor of Geosystems Science at the University of Oxford is speaking about methane.

His point is that as long as methane emissions each year are no more than 99.7% of the previous year’s they are not responsible for further global warming. So he does argue for a reduction but it is very small and is nothing like the reduction our climate chumps claim is needed.

He does urge though that CO2 is the real problem as far as he is concerned and he states that any decisions around methane are likely to have negligible impact on peak global temperature at no more than a few tenths of a degree at most.

He argues for fairness in any carbon zero act that the NZ Government may pass and argues that it should treat all sectors equally in terms of their impact on global temperatures (and not on these ridiculous carbon emissions they are blamed for).

This is very timely with the carbon zero bill pending. The New Zealand Government has to date got it so so wrong with methane and while the hope is that the science our politicians ignored for so long has gained more acceptance and will make the correct treatment of methane a slam dunk, there is a lot of political pressure for the Government to hit farmers with an unjust tax.

Even Air New Zealand are advocating against farmers with a submission to the Carbon Zero consultation calling for methane to reduce to zero. Unfair, unscientific and downright mean and also hypocritical until they get their electric planes off the ground.

So speakers like Professor Allen are much needed. His voice will add weight to people like Dave Frame who makes a similar argument and of course to us. We started questioning how methane was portrayed over 10 years ago and while it has taken a long time, slowly more and more voices are joining ours.

Comments

Do you have references for Myles Allen’s essential point that methanagic warming can be defined as being directly proportional to something like 28 X [ rate of change in methane concentration] + 0.25 x [methane accumulation]
He claimed in Whangarei last night this was long accepted climate science.
This would have huge impact on farming and dairying in particular and could offer justification for carbon rebates if quite modest reductions in methane emissions can be achieved.